Climate Change Impacts on Woody Plants: From Physiological Responses to Smart Forestry Solutions

Global climate change, characterized by rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events, is profoundly reshaping the survival, distribution, and adaptation strategies of forest ecosystems worldwide. Understanding how plants in these ecosystems perceive, respond, and acclimate to these environmental stressors is a fundamental challenge in plant and forest science. Concurrently, the rapid advancement of smart forestry—integrating remote sensing, high-throughput phenotyping, big data analytics, and machine learning—offers unprecedented opportunities to monitor, model, and mitigate climate-induced impacts on forests.

This Research Topic aims to bridge the gap between traditional physiological research and cutting-edge technological applications, focusing on the multi-scale responses of woody plants to climate change in forested ecosystems. We invite contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following key themes:


- Physiological and Molecular Mechanisms of Climate Adaptation: Studies investigating plant responses to drought, heat, elevated CO₂, and their combinations, including insights into photosynthesis, water relations, carbon allocation, and genomic or epigenetic regulation of stress tolerance.

- Ecological and Evolutionary Responses: Research on shifts in forest species distribution, population dynamics, local adaptation, and phenological changes under current and future climate scenarios in forests.

- Smart Forestry Applications: Innovations in forest management that leverage intelligent technologies (e.g., UAV-based LiDAR, hyperspectral imaging, IoT sensors, and AI-driven models) for real-time forest health monitoring, early stress detection, precision silviculture, and adaptive forest restoration.

- Predictive Modeling and Risk Assessment: Development of predictive frameworks (e.g., species distribution models, genomic offset models, and process-based growth models) to forecast forest vulnerability and guide climate-smart management decisions.


We welcome original research articles, reviews, and methodological papers that provide a mechanistic understanding of plant-climate interactions and demonstrate practical pathways for enhancing forest resilience in the Anthropocene. By integrating physiological knowledge with technological innovation, this Research Topic will provide a comprehensive reference for scientists, forest managers, and policymakers dedicated to sustaining global forest resources under climate change.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Smart forestry, woody plants, forest conservation, physiological responses, adaptation in forest ecosystems, climate-induced impacts on forests, woody plant response to drought, epigenetic

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.